When he lost the French kingdom in the 1450s, the Duke of York seized his opportunity and began his revolt.

It was a powerful and easily grasped story that, by Shakespeare’s day, had already been in circulation for 100 years.But her eighteen-year old son revenges his father, overthrowing Henry VI to become in 1461 the Yorkist king Edward IV. Unfortunately for Richard, this created a lot of hostility towards his reign and after his son and wife died, the way was clear for Henry Tudor who, in ordinary circumstances, would have NEVER been considered as a serious claimant to the throne but Richard III’s accession and the loss of his son and wife changed everything. Nobody will ever know if a beloved brother, loyal friend and kind leader, described by contemporary sources as having "a good heart" and never seeking land or power gains for himself, suddenly did an about-turn and murdered his nephew to steal the throne. In the Hollow Crown the portraits of the leading women are as richly painted as those of the men, and even those who appear only briefly are memorable.

From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. I realize after reading The Wars of the Roses that fifteenth century England was not much different.They did not hive off into dynastic factions, but stuck together, kept the peace and attempted to preserve a normal system of royal government. He wrote and presented the popular Netflix series “Secrets of Great British Castles” and has an exclusive deal with Sony Pictures Television to produce and develop historical TV series, including adaptations of his books. Only after decades of chaos had the family rift been healed by the victory of a Lancastrian, Henry Tudor, over a Yorkist, Richard III, at the battle of Bosworth in 1485.

Tautly structured, elegantly written, and finely attuned to the values and sensibilities of the age, The Wars of the Roses is probably the best introduction to the conflict currently in print. The writing is excellent as you'd expect from Dan Jones but as others have said, it is complicated to follow at times as so many of the men had the same names in those days. Going into it, I had strong opinions about the warring families, having studied the Tudors for 16 years and Shakespeare’s histories in college—but also because my ancestors had been strong supporters of the Lancastrian claim. Jones doesn't just tell the story of the Wars of the Roses, but gives the reader an insite to why they occured and why they turned out the way they did.England coped for a remarkably long time – thanks chiefly to the efforts of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk.

Yet he had neither killed nor captured Henry VI or Prince Edward, so spent the first 10 years of his reign fighting to secure his crown. in " The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly " Publishing This Week" newsletter. Meanwhile, let’s add the Stanley family into the mix and we are sure to have a great political mess.The double rose created a number of false assumptions: that Henry Tudor was on a par, in terms of royal blood, with the white-rose Yorkists; that his marriage to Elizabeth of York put an end to the violence that had engulfed England in the second half of the h century; and that the Wars of the Roses (a h-century term) was simply a blood feud between two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty.